


Coming Home

by neensz



Series: fisher'verse [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-14
Updated: 2012-06-14
Packaged: 2017-11-07 17:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/433613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neensz/pseuds/neensz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone's apparently American, Arthur's a disabled former Marine and Merlin's a commercial fisherman. Merlin was transplanted from the Pacific Northwest to the Deep South during high school, which is when he met Arthur and Morgana. When Arthur joined the Marines and Merlin didn't, they stopped speaking. They hadn't spoken in five years, until now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home

  
The first thing I noticed was the prosthetic.  Sleek and gleaming, it looked like it belonged in a big-budget science-fiction movie.  Second thing I noticed was the person attached to it jogging towards me, cussing in a painfully familiar drawl, “How the hell you manage to get even taller than the last time I seen you, Em?”  
  
He was the absolute last thing I’d expected to see when I left the TSA secured area of the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport, fresh off a grueling twelve hour, three-legged flight from Kodiak, Alaska.  Last I’d heard he was somewhere in Texas, for some experimental surgery or rehab or something.  
  
What the hell was I supposed to do, here?  Stricken by indecision, I made to walk on past him and pretend I hadn’t seen him, or heard him calling my name.  I was too tired to deal with this shit, and the haze of painkillers muffling the complaints from my recently reduced shoulder weren’t helping me think on my feet any quicker.  I should have known better though; Arthur never had dealt well with being ignored.  He grabbed me in a bear hug as soon as he was close enough, and I gritted my teeth against the yelp that tried to escape as he jarred my shoulder.  Why the hell was he hugging me, anyway?  I mean, Jesus, we hadn’t even spoken since the epic smack-down that ended our friendship five years ago, and now we were suddenly on hugging terms?  I forced my face to not betray me by wincing when he segued into the back-slapping era of the hug, and just stood stiffly in the cage of his arms until he backed off with an uncertain look on his face.  
  
He was standing easily, one hip cocked unthinkingly in the same way he’d stood when I’d last seen him five years ago.  I couldn’t prevent myself from feeling the wrench deep in my gut, seeing the prosthetic where there’d once been a second freckled and muscled leg, but at least I didn’t let it show.  I pushed past him without saying anything, because fuck.  What the hell was I supposed to say?  ‘Hey, man.  I haven’t seen you since you tried to convince me to hide who I was so I could go and get myself killed right next to you?’ or ‘Arthur!  I’m still desperately in love with you in a ridiculously teenaged-girl way even though you’re straight and a complete asshole on top of that!’ or ‘Hold still, dude, while I rip off your bionic leg and beat you to death with it because you almost _died_ while we were in the middle of a stupid fight that lasted half a decade too long’?  It was just easier not to say anything at all.  
  
He trailed after me like a confused and abandoned duckling while I made a beeline for the sweet, sweet green and white logo that was hovering over the heads of the masses of frustrated airport denizens like a beacon of hope.  Caffeine.  If I could just wake up a little, I would be able to figure out what to say.  
  
I reached the end of the thankfully short line and tried not to fall asleep standing up while I waited for my turn at the counter.  Arthur hovered beside me, but I ignored him.  “Morgana was supposed to be picking me up,” I startled myself by saying.  My mouth seemed to have declared its independence from the rest of my body.  I really needed that caffeine, before it said something I regretted.  
  
I glanced at him sidelong, but he flicked his eyes away from me right before they would have met mine. “She had a thing, asked me to come pick you up,” he told the trashcan.  I’d always been able to tell when Arthur was lying.  It looked like he’d forgotten that sometime in the last five years.  In the middle of my struggle to decide whether to take him at face value or call him on his bullshit, the person ahead of me in line managed to disappear, and I gratefully let the struggle between petty and mature responses become moot.  
  
I ordered as much espresso as they could legally serve me in the biggest cup they had, and tried not to entertain violent fantasies about escaping this god-awful awkward situation while I waited for the barista to hand over my blessed drug cocktail.  Arthur lingered at my elbow, like he was afraid I was going to make a break for it, which was utterly ridiculous.  As much as I may have wanted to, I couldn’t have outrun a herd of turtles at that point, much less a guy who looked like he still ran five miles every morning, come freezing rain or scorching sun or bionic prosthetic leg.  
  
The barista handed over my venti bliss after what felt like only a second.  (It made me wonder, briefly, exactly how much the painkillers were affecting me; not that there was anything I could do about it.)  I juggled the coffee and my backpack and eventually had to resort to carrying my bag hooked over my ‘good’ shoulder, even though it still made me way too aware of my other, recently dislocated and even more recently reduced, shoulder.  Once that was sorted, I drifted off in the general direction of the baggage claim.  Arthur was still doing his duckling impression, trailing behind me.  I could tell because his new leg made a little creaking sound every time the knee hinge bent.  Maybe it needed oiling or something.  
  
I sat on an empty bench facing baggage carousel five and rubbed my shoulder absently.  I winced when Arthur sat beside me—he’d managed to startle me and my half-hearted massage had turned into a really fucking painful tug on my shoulder.  Apparently the drugs I was on were messing with my observational skills.  I really hoped there wasn’t some sort of bomb scare anytime soon—I’d probably still be zoning out on this bench after they evacuated and be hauled in for questioning or something.  Arthur was staring at the empty baggage carousel and didn’t see me jump, or my subsequent face of manfully repressed pain.  
  
“Hey, Arthur, long time no see,” he said after we’d been silent for about a minute.  He used to do this thing where he’d have both sides of our conversation all by his ownsome, when I wasn’t paying enough attention to him, and his imitation of my west coast accent had only gotten worse over the past five years.  
  
I glared at him.  So, what, now we were just pretending the whole thing had never happened?  Everything was suddenly hunky dory and dotted with daisies?  
  
“Hey, Arthur, long time no see.  IED take off your dialing hand, too?” I heard my mouth ask him.  Apparently the secession from the rest of my body was going well for it.  
  
Arthur blinked at me, his face open and shocked.  “Wow.  Real nice, Merlin.  I… don’t really know what to say to that.”  
  
“Yeah, well, the whole world doesn’t actually revolve around you,” my mouth replied, while my brain flailed in panicked protest.  Dear lord, what the hell kind of painkillers had the Kodiak Urgent Care clinic given me?  And why the hell had the airline let me on the plane while I was on them?  
  
Arthur gaped at me wordlessly before snapping his mouth shut and staring off toward the baggage carousel, whose light had just started flashing warningly.  “Well, this is awkward,” he muttered.  
  
Rather than giving my damned mouth another opportunity to respond, I lurched to my feet and headed over to hover by the edge of the carousel as bags started crashing down onto it from the scuffed-up chute.  It was only when I saw my own bag slam onto the slow-moving conveyer belt that I realized yanking 80 pounds over the ledge and onto my back was not going to end well for me right now.  There was a sling somewhere in my carry-on that I should probably still be wearing.  I reached a hand out for the strap of my duffel anyway, but another arm overtook mine, freckled and arm-hair bleached blond from the sun.  Arthur hauled the duffel off the belt and onto his back like it was filled with down pillows and not neoprene raingear and rubber boots and soggy, dirty laundry.  
  
“This it, or you have anything else?”  
  
I pointed wordlessly at the WetLock box holding a couple dozen pounds of frozen sockeye for my mother’s sister Hunith, the only relative beside Uncle Gaius I had left in the whole world (not counting Arthur’s clan of an extended family, who’d practically adopted me when I first moved down here as a tiny traumatized freshman and who had mostly taken my side in our friendship-ending fight, awkwardly enough), and he grabbed that as well, hefting it easily.  I regained control of the Independent Republic of My Mouth long enough to keep it shut tight as I stumbled back to the bench to grab my backpack, and managed not to say anything I’d immediately regret as I followed him out of the building towards the short-term parking garage.

 

<><><><><><><>

  
We’d only just barely gotten started on the maze of roads surrounding the airport when Arthur shattered the silence by announcing, “So, Morgana told me you have a boyfriend.”  
  
I shifted in the passenger side seat of Arthur’s truck, turning to stare at him incredulously.  “Sorry, what?”  
  
“Um.  I mean, how’s that going for you?”  Arthur stared at the red light in front of us, determinedly not meeting my eyes.  I stared at the side of his head, willing him to turn and look at me, but he ignored me.  
  
“How is having a boyfriend working out for me?” I parroted back.  
  
“Sure?” Arthur shrugged.  
  
“Not well, considering we broke up last year,” I snorted.  Arthur’s ears flamed.  Awkward.  “He wasn’t a fan of the fishing thing, and I wasn’t a fan of the sleeping around thing.”  
  
Arthur turned to meet my eyes steadily.  “Do you want to take out a hit on him?” he asked in a frighteningly steady tone.  “I know some people.  Or I could knock him around some for you if you want.”  
  
I narrowed my eyes at him and thought about saying something brilliant and eviscerating, but thought better of it almost immediately.  First and most importantly, I was on prescription painkillers and who knew what sort of ridiculousness would come out of my mouth.  Secondly, I was exhausted and hurting, and hell, he was probably trying to be nice and wasn’t intentionally implying my being some delicate little waif who couldn’t take care of myself.  Instead I just pointed out that “the light’s green.”  
  
Arthur whipped back around to face the road and accelerated jerkily.  
  
He might have been trying to pretend everything was alright and that we were still best friends and not kinda vague nemeses who’d split up all of our mutual friends (and most of his family) between us, who talked awkwardly around the existence of the other person whenever a mutual acquaintance brought them up, but I was too tired and pissed off to make the attempt.  I sat in my corner of the truck cab and stewed, letting the silence grow until we were marinating in it.  Arthur let that continue until we hit the highway and had two hours of nothing but winding roads and silence between us and our podunk little hometown.  
  
“So let me get this straight—”  
  
“Oh, ha ha, very funny,” I interrupted snidely.  
  
“You know what I mean,” Arthur glared at me before turning his attention back to the road, knuckles whitening on the steering wheel.  “You graduate first in your class with your Bachelor’s, get full funding and your pick of advisors for your Master’s, and when Nobel Prize winners start fighting over you for who’s gonna be your mentor or whatever for your Ph.D. you decide to chuck it all and go fucking fishing?”  
  
I sighed and leaned my head against the passenger side window, staring out at the shrubbery whipping past on the side of the road.  The condensation on the glass felt good against my flushed face, and at least it was dark enough by now that Arthur couldn’t see me blushing.  “Only one, and she was only a nominee, she didn’t win it,” I corrected him tiredly.  I didn’t feel the urge to try and reconnect and patch whatever this was up, but I knew that if I didn’t respond at all and just ignored him entirely he’d just keep asking different questions until I finally snapped.  A picture of Arthur was in the dictionary under the definition of stubborn.  At least this was a relatively safe topic.  I fought my exhaustion and tried to get my words in order.  “Math’s gorgeous, and exciting, and yeah, sometimes I feel like I can describe the whole world with it if I keep going long enough…  But fishing makes me feel alive, in a way I can’t describe.  It’s like I didn’t really exist until that first time out, you know?  And fishing’s a young man’s game.  Math’ll still be there when I’m too worn out to fish anymore, and…” I trailed off, uncertain of how to make him understand, and unsure if I even wanted him to.  
  
Arthur let the silence sit for a few minutes before he broke it.  “Like being a part of a giant family, with brothers and sisters all over the world who you’ve never even met, but who you know will jump in front of a bullet for you anyway,” he said quietly, the ache of loss clear in his voice.  
  
I aborted the instinctive movement to rest a hand on Arthur’s shoulder as soon as my hand twitched.  Like hell sharing sob stories would magically make everything all better.  “Yeah,” I agreed quietly instead.  “But I didn’t have a clue how I felt about fishing until after I-” I stopped myself.  I wasn’t Arthur’s fucking life coach, that wasn’t my job anymore.  I changed the subject.  “So, Morgana said you were going back to school?  What for?”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur shot a wry glance my way, “Physiotherapy.”  
  
“You’re going to be a physical therapist?” I tried not to let anything color my tone.  If there was anything I’d remembered about Arthur, it was that disbelief prompted aggression, and while the thought of a one-legged physical therapist definitely inspired a little disbelief, frankly, I just didn’t really care enough to have an epic debate over his fitness for his chosen profession.  
  
Arthur just laughed, the sound bright and free, never taking his eyes off the road ahead of us.  The silence filling the truck was easier after that, and I zoned out on the familiar scenery out my window for the next twenty minutes or so, trying not to let the classic rock drifting quietly from the speakers send me to sleep.  
  
“You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes right before you’re gonna die?”  Arthur’s question was abrupt and flat, and shattered the almost easy silence filling the truck.  “Mine did,” Arthur continued without giving me time to reply, “after the explosion; all the things I wanted to fix, and knew I was never gonna be able to.”  
  
I opened my mouth to reply but couldn’t find the words, and instead managed to gape like a gasping fish, flopping on the deck, suffocating to death in a medium full of oxygen my body couldn’t process.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I spared a wistful wish for the ability to smack the part of my brain that insisted on overblown fishing metaphors for everything, but the rest of me was flummoxed by Arthur’s random decision that it was now Sharing Time.  
  
“I thought I was gonna die, and the thing that sucked the worst about it was that you hated me and I’d never even tried to fix it.”  
  
“I don’t hate you,” I hadn’t realized I was even going to say anything until after I’d already said it.  I couldn’t blame this one on the Independent Republic of My Mouth, though, because.  Well.  It wouldn’t be as hard to keep talking if I wasn’t in control.  “I never hated you, Arthur.  You just- God,” I interrupted myself, digging my nails into my palm (of the hand attached to my good shoulder, I knew better than to try and do much with the other hand, now) to distract myself from the burning in my eyes.  “I trusted you.  And you just turned around and asked me to be someone else.  Jesus, man,” I gulped for air and tried to even out my erratic breathing with pure willpower.  Surprisingly enough, it didn’t work.  “Almost worse than, than when that drunk hit my parents,” I muttered under my breath.  The radio wasn’t loud, though, and I could tell Arthur had heard me when the blinker clicked on and we skidded to a stop on the graveled shoulder of the road.  
  
“We just-  I can’t-” Arthur pounded the steering wheel, once, twice, and turned to grab me in a rough hug.  I couldn’t suppress my pained yelp and Arthur let go like I was on fire.  
  
“Dislocated shoulder—reduced yesterday,” I managed to get out, wheezing through the agony.  So, those painkillers had definitely worn off, then.  
  
“Where the hell is your sling, then?” Arthur sounded strangely furious.  
  
“In my backpack,” I answered after the fire had re-centralized in my shoulder, as opposed to spreading out through my entire body like it did whenever my shoulder got jarred.  
  
“Hell of a lot of good it’s doing you there.”  Arthur grabbed my bag from the backseat of the cab and rummaged through it until he found the sling, and then bullied me into it.  He’d found the painkillers and muscle relaxers, too, and made me take one of each with a sip of lukewarm coffee from a forgotten cup languishing in the driver’s side cup holder.  
  
We sat for a few minutes before Arthur flipped his blinker back on (a wholly unnecessary precaution on the empty highway, but then, that was Arthur) and pulled back onto the road.  
  
“What did you mean, earlier, when you said that you had a giant crush on me back in high school?”  Arthur didn’t take his eyes off the road, his tone an odd combination of tight and offhand.  
  
“I what?  I never said that.  I _didn’t_ ,” I protested, but the sick feeling in my gut let me know my mouth had probably run away with me again during one of those periods at the airport or during the first hour in the truck that I couldn’t quite remember, barely an hour later, as the painkillers loosened their grip on me.  
  
“You kinda did,” Arthur didn’t elaborate further.  
  
“God,” I reached up to tug at my hair with the hand not trapped in the sling.  “Probably just what it sounded like,” I sighed, defeated, after Arthur’s continued silence spurred me into saying something.  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to get my gay all over you.  It was just a high school crush, because you were the first person who seemed to accept me for who I was, and you were nice to me.  I know better now,” I finished bitterly.  
  
Arthur’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel, and the muscles in his jaw jumped.  “What do you mean, you know better now?”  
  
“Well, obviously,” I coughed out a harsh laugh that felt like it was ripping up my throat on the way out, “I mean, seriously Arthur.  If you’d liked me for who I was you wouldn’t have asked me to _just not be gay_ to make your life easier, would you’ve?”  
  
Startled, Arthur turned to face me full on.  “What? But I-”  
  
“Eyes on the road, _eyes on the road!_ ” I yelled as a pair of glowing yellow eyes shone through the scrubby trees on the side of the road.  It would be just my luck to get killed in a deer-on-car collision after making it through a whole salmon season mostly intact (the more dangerous seasons, like king crab or cod or opie or even halibut, I always came out of without a scratch.  Salmon, though, obviously had it out for me.  Every single season, so far.  At least I hadn’t broken any bones this year.  Or drowned.  Again).  
  
Arthur whipped back around and jerked the wheel to detour safely around the idiot deer who’d decided that now was a great time to bound into the middle of the road solely in order to freeze and stare dumbly at oncoming traffic.  
  
A minute later, after my heart had slowed back down to a normal rhythm, Arthur started to say something.  I didn’t let him get enough of the first word out to even guess at what it was going to be before I talked over him, “Tolerance isn’t the same as acceptance, Arthur.  Just leave it.  I don’t want to talk about it.  And it’s not like we need to, anyway—it’s not like we’re going to hang out of our own free will, right?”  Arthur didn’t reply.  
  
I started to drift in the thick silence as a combination of exhaustion and the drugs Arthur had bullied me into taking started to kick in, but we were at my Uncle Gaius’s house (where I stayed when I was in the lower 48, seeing as it was only about four or five months out of the year) before I lost the battle against sleep.  
  
Arthur guided me up the porch and into the house, unlocking the door with my keys, piling my crap in the kitchen and half carrying, half guiding me as far as my room and settling me in on my bed.  I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.  
  
When I woke up the next morning, aching and tangled up on top of the covers, there was a note on my bedside table.  _You’re my big regret.  We’re fixing this.  Family don’t end that easy,_ it said in Arthur’s chicken-scratch, which only years of practice let me decipher.  It made me smile, even though I tried to fight it.  I was pissed that I didn’t get a choice in our apparent attempt at reconciliation, but for some reason, God knows why, I’d missed the asshole.


End file.
